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Tuesday 29 December 1987

…Today was a Tuesday and we decided to go to the sales.Well, Mum and Dad didn’t want to, but we wanted to because we wanted to spendsome of our Christmas money.I didn’t buy anything.[My sister] bought a hairdryer and some trousers.I was very annoyed because WHSmith in Loughborough is virtually empty.That’s the problem: they haven’t restocked yet.We came back from town on a Trippit, having taken the car in for more repairs.I was back in time to watch Carry on Camping…

The day wasn’t entirely wasted, then.

I like how I presume to have knowledge of the post-Christmas retail strategy of WHSmiths. Or lack of one.

I was always bemused at how the place used to be almost entirely devoid of stock in the days between Christmas and New Year. Didn’t they understand that was when the greatest number of WHSmith vouchers were aching to be redeemed?

3 thoughts on “Tuesday 29 December 1987”

I used to love going to WH Smiths on a Sunday or a Bank Holiday because they were only allowed to open the newsagent bit, and everything else was roped off and in the dark, which seemed incredibly exciting, like some kind of speakeasy. Bit like when sometimes my dad used to take my mum into work at 7am and we’d come for the ride if we were up, and the newsagent hadn’t properly opened so we got to go through the back door.

Used to love WH Smiths in general, actually, we even went to Majorca through WH Smith Travel. These days I barely go in it outside stations, because it’s such a mess of a shop.

Well, I don’t think he had officially opened because he couldn’t be arsed switching all the lights on yet and hadn’t yet put out all the papers, but we had such a good relationship with our newsagents, due to having umpteen comics on regular order, we were regulars and thus invited in to this lock-in.